Robin sighed heavily, then dropped the blanket when the extra heat was uncomfortable. He scratched along his jaw. “Several days’ worth of beard,” he complained softly, knowing how scraggly his facial hair always grew in. Combined with his exhaustion, he must look awful.
“Would you like me to shave you?” Lucas said it, calm and perfectly polite, only to go still when Robin stared at him, wide-eyed and dry-mouthed. “Your face,” Lucas added, perhaps realizing how his words might sound. “If you feel unsteady.” He tacked that on a few seconds later, probably because Robin hadn’t blinked.
“Um,” Robin answered at last, brilliantly, and at least took care of the blinking situation. If he hadn’t been so tired, he might not have immediately imagined Lucas shaving him in more intimate ways, something he probably would not have considered at all if not forthose wordssaid inthat voice. “You cut your hair,” he threw out as a distraction, then decided he needed to get up and get moving before anything else embarrassing could happen.
He turned in order to lower his feet to the floor, realized too late the blankets were wrapped snugly around his legs, and hit the floor with only a fraction of a second to save himself from a bloody nose.
“I seem to be caught in the blankets,” he remarked quietly, resigned, rather than saying any of the rude phrases that came to mind. Kurt Redferne had been already wizened andancient when Robin had arrived at this house, and he’d had no hesitation in teaching his favorite vulgarities to Robin, especially once he knew it upset some of the ladies.
“I’m going to touch you to help you up.” Making almost no noise, Lucas came over to do just that. Robin would have sighed at his thoughtfulness, but suspected the warning was because Lucas was used to people shrinking away from him. So Robin let himself be half-lifted back up onto the couch. At least he got to sit this time.
“I’ve never fallen down so much in my life,” Robin complained as he adjusted the blankets so they weren’t so tight while he covertly brushed all the places where he could still feel Lucas’ hands on him. “I’m not normally like this.”
“I know.” Lucas returned to the chair, although not to his reading or his relaxed posture.
Their eyes met again. Robin ought to say something to ease the awkwardness that would inevitably rise between them. The thing was, he was tired and not feeling his best, or even well, and that was a conversation that required, if not alcohol to ease it along, then at least cake.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made cake. Or really, any food that took longer than ten minutes to heat up.
He should make Lucas a cake.
He should speak, probably, also.
“You stayed.”
Robin took a breath. “You didn’t have to,” he added quickly. “But… thank you.” He glanced around the room. He hadn’t heard the TV, and any books that weren’t handbooks or guides or handwritten collections of notes were upstairs, except for one of Marise’s romance novels Robin hadn’t the heart to move, so itwas still on the desk in the kitchen. “You must have been bored,” he realized aloud. Even putting some of the project baskets into order, which someone had done, wouldn’t have taken that long.
The book Lucas had been reading was turned over on the ottoman. It was an old and battered guide to spinning. Finding those in antique book stores and estate sales had once been René’s passion, or so Robin had been told. René had died when Robin was very young.
“Oh, you can’t have found that interesting.” Robin gestured to the book, then remembered he was speaking to Lucas Greysmith, collector of knowledge, no matter the cost. Some tedium wouldn’t stop Lucas, if he’d even been bored in the first place.
Lucas picked up the book to run his fingers over the printed words as if they were braille and he wanted to read them again in a different way. His nails were painted. The color looked black for a moment, then dark blue when he moved his fingers again.
“It’s all ancient technology,” he commented, slow at first but then faster and excited. “I forget that. I think most people do. We’re disconnected from where our clothes come from in this country. Handmade or homemade is a luxury now, to most. But the technology itself is thousands of years old. It’s one of the first things we took the time to study and improve and learn, because we all want warmth and color. It’sbeautifulthat just in this room, there are ways to make thread and yarns which will be used to make cloth, and that is part of a tradition going back to our earliest ancestors. There are tools that span from the vintage spindle in the basket closest to you, to the one my mother has but never uses, that she made with pieces from a hobby store for only a few dollars. And the spindle itself, with its variations, connects nearly all of humanity. It’s simple but it’s a technological marvel. Then, to consider things like dyes, theeffort it once took to make them and use them…. We’ve added electricity and artificial colors and synthetic fabrics, but at its heart, this craft, your craft, has been the same throughout the ages. And yet despite how old it is, there is no aspect of this that isn’t complex and doesn’t require skill.” Lucas flipped backwards in the book, which Robin hadn’t read and so didn’t know what Lucas was searching for. Lucas looked thoughtful. “Is there a history of the different methods and tools across continents and centuries? How they spread across trade and migration routes? I’d be interested in reading if….”
He trailed off, then looked up almost guiltily and closed the book. He didn’t hunch his shoulders or anything so obvious, but his low, “You know all of that already,” was close to an apology. An apology for getting excited about a perfectly innocent subject. Because someone, some time when Lucas had been young, had told him he was boring or abnormal for doing that, and even now, with his knowledge revered, he was still self-conscious about it. Someone’s careless words or deeds had wormed their way inside him as effectively as a curse.
Robin had probably been one of those people, avoiding Lucas as he had after Lucas’ attempt at teasing, even if Robin hadn’t done it for long.
“It’s nice to hear someone else get excited about it,” Robin tried to tell him, clumsily, but he was tired.
Lucas didn’t seem to hear it. He looked at Robin and smiled again. “Would you like to try to keep down some food?”
The way he said it suggested Robin had tried some food at some point and had not kept it down.
Robin knew he was making a face but couldn’t stop it. “How long was I asleep?” He didn’t want to know if he’d thrown up on any Greysmiths.
“You were out the night we arrived, then sick the next day and part of the night.” Lucas was not smiling anymore. “Your fever broke sometime late last night, and you’ve been sleeping through the morning, although Persephone said you had some tea.”
“Oh no.” Robin didn’t know what to be more horrified by: being that sick and not recalling much of what Lucas was talking about, or all the unfinished tasks waiting for him in the workroom.
“This morning it seemed a restful sleep,” Lucas continued, a sternness entering his voice. “You’ll need more of that to recover, and food as well.” The hint of anger made Robin meet his eye, startled. Lucas was almost glaring and it was as intimidating as any coven member might have told him it would be. “There was no food in your kitchen, Blessing.”
Robin found himself picking at the blankets before he remembered himself and looked back up. “I have been busy.” The defense was feeble. He tried to rally. “I have been. And I’ll be behind now.”
A fraction of Lucas’ sternness left him. “You have orders for Christmas?”
“No.” Robin sighed in relief at that. “I didn’t take any this year, not for the business. A few small things for certain pushy folk.” He stopped there, out of habit, but Lucas was hardly going to care if Robin shit-talked some in the coven. “Theyknowhow long it takes to make—oh. Persephone asked for something,” Robin abruptly remembered. “It’s done. Did she take it with her?”
